Former UCC church joins the Evangelical Covenant Church

Friday, August 03, 2007

For 60 years, Nancy Eckardt has been a member of Zion Church in Sheboygan. And in that time she's seen a lot of changes.

But most recently, she watched as Zion, 1125 N. Sixth St., changed denominations — leaving behind the United Church of Christ and joining the Evangelical Covenant Church.

"We were just not happy with the United Church of Christ," said Eckardt, 86. "(The ECC) seemed to fit all of our needs perfectly."

It has been an interesting year and a half for the congregation of the Zion Church, said the Rev. Steve Pedersen. But while it was a tough journey, the parish was able to make it through — together.

"It's been a time of transition, of claiming our identity and our roots back," Pedersen said. "We're doing well. We're united. It's been a healthy change for us."

Zion is the first ECC church in Sheboygan County.

In January of 2006, at the church's annual meeting, 85 percent of the nearly 500-member congregation voted in favor of leaving the UCC for another, more conservative Christian denomination because of disagreements with the UCC over biblical authority and the nature of who Jesus is, Pedersen said.

At the time, nearly 50 of the UCC's 5,725 churches voted to disaffiliate from the denomination after a controversial General Synod in the summer of 2005 in which the denomination embraced gay marriage.

"It's a very diverse denomination," Pedersen said of the UCC. "It was confusing for people who would come into our church and then read the national news about what the UCC is doing. We don't have anything against the local UCC churches that are in town. It's just the national progressive leadership that doesn't speak for us anymore."

The UCC has lost over 200+ churches since 2005 yet the national office and some Conference officials would rather pretend that it's not that big of a deal or that it's part of some conspiracy. We are a dying denomination in desperate need for serious leadership. There is no reason for a church like Zion to leave the denomination because "the national progressive leadership that doesn't speak for us anymore." In our polity, the national office doesn't speak for anyone other than themselves.

posted by
UCCtruths, Friday, August 03, 2007

2 Comments:

God is still speaking, but the folks in Cleveland won't shut up long enough to listen. And the problem is the rest of us can't hear the still silent voice because we are hectored and yammered at relentlessly by the folks in Cleveland. We might come to the same conclusions they do, maybe not, but at least we could stay in covenant. Cleveland's attitude toward the people in the pews is not pastoral, it is not that of a shepherd. And these people do not have the love for their flock that would give their "prophetic" judgment credibility.

These people have not been thrown down the cistern like Jeremiah, they dug their own hole, isolated themselves and called it the cost of discipleship.

The people in Cleveland care more about what goes on in their heads than the people standing right in front of them.

People better start thinking pretty darn hard about who they are going to get to replace John Thomas, because frankly, it is the end of the road for this type of contempt toward the laity.

The way the upper levels of essentially volunteer or group organizations, are co-opted by the far left is a fascinating study. There was a great interview with the actress Olivia D de Havilland in the WSJ a while back. She became an american citizen during WWII and President Roosevelt asked her to promote the war effort in hollywood. She described how the Stalinists took over the agendas of union and other groups by subterfuge and sheer determiniation. The goal of getting some respected organization like a church to endorse your political views becomes the most important thing in your life, and you work hard at it. And because you are the only one working hard at the politics and not your real job, it happens!

The Rationale

"If you believe love should be uncritical, you
may soon be thinking that I do not love this church. But my experience has been
that to be a member of the United Church of Christ is, almost by definition, to
be a critic of it. To be uncritical is to be the real oddball in this church.
Perhaps to be uncritical is to be un-Christian".

-From The United Church of Christ
Tomorrow, THEOLOGY AND IDENTITY: TRADITIONS, MOVEMENTS, AND POLITY IN THE
UCC (Pilgrim Press: 1990), edited by Dan Johnson